Guitar Man

Johannes Luley talks about his solo work…

As if crafting a massive double concept album is not enough to keep him occupied, Johannes Luley released his second solo album, QITARA, in late 2017. Where the Beings express his progressive influences, when Luley flies solo it’s all about fusion. “I come from jazz originally,” he explains. “In my teenage years I asked my dad to pay for my guitar lessons. My dad, being a huge Coltrane and Miles Davis fan, said, ‘You can do that, but you have to take jazz lessons.’ I was into Slade and Alice Cooper, all the glam bands of the time and I reluctantly agreed, but I’ve never looked back.”

QITARA, as the name implies, is dedicated to the electric guitar and the artists that inspired Luley, from Soft Machine and Steve Hillage to David Gilmour, Jeff Beck and John McLaughlin – “Probably my all-time favourite guitar player,” says Luley, who didn’t want to impose his jazz rock proclivities on Perfect Beings. “I feel very comfortable in that genre, but I didn’t want to push that on the band. They’re not afraid of jazz but it’s not where they come from. I was happy to have that outlet. Doing something more on the jazz side has definitely been itching me.”

Luley played around 15 different guitars on the record, including a Steve Howe model Gibson ES-175 on the track Red And Orange. “I got this guitar because it was built the same year I was born and later I found out it was built in the same month that I was born, so I fell in love with that and we’re inseparable now,” says Luley. “I’m not a collector, I’m a player, but I do collect guitars. I don’t collect them to put them up on the wall, I collect them to play them.”